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Social whodunnit competition launches in India

An experiment by Microsoft Research aims to see how people will interact to solve a puzzle that relies on teamwork and cellphones

By Jim Giles

ONLINE social networks have helped spur protest movements and put politicians in office. But the power of these networks is built on easy access to platforms like Facebook and Twitter. Now researchers at Microsoft are about to test the power of social technologies in a tougher setting&colon; India, where just a tenth of the population has internet access.

Competitors in the Whodunit? Challenge will leverage the power of mobile phones and old-fashioned, face-to-face contact to solve a puzzle posed by a team based at Microsoft Research India in Bangalore. At stake is a prize of 100,000 rupees, or almost US&dollar;2,000, about twice the country’s average annual income. The challenge will show us how people in developing countries use technology to collaborate across long distances and in time-critical situations.

The competition, beginning on 1 February, revolves around a fictional event and a set of five clues – the who, what, where, when and why – that describe the event. To obtain a clue, competitors have to call a number provided by Microsoft and hang up after a single ring. This practice, which tells the recipient they have missed a call, is commonly used in India as a means of prompting someone to ring back.

People in India try not to waste money on calls, says Rajan Vaish, a computer scientist at the University of California, Santa Cruz, who is working on the experiment. “That’s why the culture of the missed call is so important.”

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A missed call to the Microsoft number triggers a text message to the caller’s mobile phone that contains one of the five clues. But the system will only send one message to each phone number. To collect the five clues needed to win, competitors will have to band together and share messages. The key to the competition is that some of the five clues will be sent out very rarely, so each team will need access to many phones to make enough calls to receive all the clues. Vaish estimates that a team will need to make about 500 calls to get the full set. The answers must be sent by text to Microsoft.

The researchers are leaving it up to competitors to decide how to collaborate. When a similar experiment was run in 2009 in the US, the winning team organised their efforts around a website and email. Neither service is widely available in India, so competitors may rely on social networks that revolve around work or places of study, says Vaish. He points out that people who interact with many individuals, such as rickshaw drivers, could do well.

“People who interact with many individuals, such as rickshaw drivers, could do well”

The challenge is also an attempt to see what motivates people to organise themselves. In the US-based experiment, the winning team offered to share the reward to encourage strangers to contribute. Vaish says it will be interesting to see whether a similar method prevails in India, or if entrants band together using existing social ties.

Language is another factor. India has several hundred languages, including about 20 that are spoken by at least a million people. Each text will be sent in English and in the major language served by the local mobile phone provider, and the Microsoft team will pay close attention to the impact that linguistic barriers have on team formation. Some of the techniques the competitors use could be deployed by city governments that want to involve many people in a search, perhaps for a fugitive or a missing person. “This will demonstrate the power of crowd,” says Vaish.

Who needs the internet?

India’s love of text messaging has spawned a huge social network that few outside the country have heard of. Users of GupShup, launched in 2007, can join groups dedicated to specific interests and exchange messages. A smartphone or computer is not required – any phone that can send a text will do. Requests to join a group, or post a message, are sent to a GupShup number, and the company’s computers do the rest. CEO Beerud Sheth says GupShup has 60 million users, putting it on a par with Facebook in India, and handles up to 2 billion messages a month. The service can be accessed by smartphone app, but the firm’s revenues rest mainly on the humble text message.

This article appeared in print under the headline “A social whodunnit”